


This Be Nothing

by RatherCharmingVermin



Category: Winter's Tale - Shakespeare
Genre: F/F, Gen, Mecha Au, Mostly Subtext, Sad and morally bleak, Sci-Fi AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 07:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15552354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RatherCharmingVermin/pseuds/RatherCharmingVermin
Summary: Paulina built Mercury Diploid to simulate Hermione's mind, her thought processes, and idiosyncrasies. But somehow, she'd only kept the trappings and had knocked out the foundations, replacing them with two dual truths: that Mercury would never forgive Leontes, and that Mercury would always love Paulina.





	This Be Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> This would probably not exist if I hadn't played Heaven Will Be Mine a few days ago.

“Why is he here?” chirps the synthetic voice of Mercury Diploid. “You know what he did to Hermione. Why is he here, Paulina?”

Leontes cringes in the co-pilot seat of the Galatean ship, at the accusation and at the presence of a voice that however unwittingly, he thought he’d silenced forever. He’s a scruffy and grey stain in the sleek black decor of Mercury Diploid’s cockpit, every board as ornate as usability would allow. Just like she would like it. Some of the wooden frames even come from Hermione’s old furniture.

“Can’t you stop it from doing that?” Leontes whines between his teeth.

“Not without a complete overhaul of her programming.” Though Paulina then speaks into the console. “Mercury, give it a rest.”

“Very well.”

A whirr comes up from the secondary computer room, in the back of the skull. Mercury must be switching on the programs for designing patterns, recording sound and imagery, creating blueprints for the unfinished rooms of the ship.

Recreating Hermione’s day-to-day with Galatean mechanics was easy. A camera ramp ran along her vertebra to feed her images, her temperature control and voice were now her main means of offering embrace. Most Galatean ships had chassis modeled after an animal, and this one was no different. It was a rabbit, for the pet they’d buried together when they were nine.

But designing anyone's mind, thought-processes, and idiosyncrasies is be a harrying task. When it comes to Hermione, constant, sweetest Hermione, well. Paulina prefers not to dwell on if she succeeded in making this doppelganger or not.

She focuses her attention on steering through metallic debris, but hears Leontes leave his seat, feels him looking over her shoulder.

“This is where you lost Antigonus’ signal?”

“The Sigil Station lost it.”

“Right. You were too concerned with…” he waves at the bay window. “...whatever this is to overlook him yourself, right?”

Paulina grips the steering handle hard enough there are marks when her fingers move away.

“It’s a memorial."

"I know," he answers, the shake of his head mirrored on the console. "I know why you did it." He paces around the room, fingers locked behind his head. "I know why you did it, doesn't make it good. It's not healthy."

”Well, some of us like to remember, some of us prefer to forget. So it goes."

He leans lower, glaring to frighten her.

“I showed up when you asked me to co-pilot, didn’t I? Why are you punishing me for it?”  
Paulina looks him in the eye for what seems like the first time in the entire expedition, resisting the urge to bare teeth.

“Get your shit together, Lee. You've scratched a lot of good will considering what you pulled, and I don't think you earned one bit of it. Antigonus traveled all the way out here for _you_. I think the least you could do is at least be here”

Leontes sighs, his shoulders in their ill-fitted jacket sloping.

“I suppose it is.

And he falls back into the chair. Mercury Diploid sings into Paulina’s earpiece, instead of using the loudspeakers as is custom for her:

_You know how I feel about you calling me a memorial. An art project._

Paulina answers aloud:

"I'm a little tired and a little on edge, honey."

_Too tired to say sorry? ___

____

__

“I am sorry, Mercury. It was out of line.”

 _Damn right.”_ Then, she giggles and Paulina recollects the exact second of the exact home video she took that giggle from. _It’s okay. I love you._

“That’s a lie,” Paulina responds, voice blank. “Lee, atmosphere entry protocols.”

“You found Antigonus?”

“I found something,” Paulina mutters, pointing at an almost imperceptible light patch on the map. She knows what it looks like. She’s not telling Leontes, though.

Part of Paulina wishes the patch of metal could be the Fare-Thee-Well, with Hermione still working on it now, all cheer and resolute sharpness. The other part of Paulina knows that the Fare-Thee-Well’s body is being recycled into standard issue security mechs, and that Hermione’s body is still in cryo on Earth, in the guardianship of a family who did nothing to stop any of this.

No one did anything to stop this.

When Leontes made his accusation, the rumor ran unchecked through the Sigil Engineering Department. Hermione did nothing but excel at her job, and was fired for misrepresenting the company. Leontes had a tantrum, destroyed a Galatean ship, and didn’t get so much as a reprimand.

They exchange dispatches with the district and with the nearest town to their landing site, until they scratch a reluctant authorization from both. They disembark on desert shrubland, empty but for a distant road surrounded with dwellings. People begin to leak out from the houses, drawn by the sight of the Mercury Diploid, and rightfully so. Her stance is wide enough to encompass their entire village, and her ears catch a few wisps of cloud. Paulina walks to meet them, shrugging the sleeves of her jumpsuit off and tying them round her waist.

“Shouldn’t we be following the radar?” Leontes asks, hiding behind a pole on the ramp like a frightened child.

“If there was ever anything to be found, these guys probably got there first.”

At the head of the welcoming committee, an old man in a long sleeved white tunic holds onto the elbow of a rosy cheeked teenager.

“Sigil Company? You’ve lost something?”

Paulina smiles.

“I’m not Sigil. He is, though. My name is Paulina.”

“Lovely to meet you, Paulina. You may call me Shepherd.” He offers a feeble handshake, which Paulina takes.

“We’re looking for a passenger ship that may have landed here in the past three weeks. An Arkan?”

Shepherd’s mouth falls ajar as he thinks, revealing toothless jaws.

“I don’t know about Arkan, but we brought a shipwreck back from about two miles away.”

She nods, a little too vigorously, as he speaks. Leontes tries to pat her shoulder, but she shrugs it off. It’s too early to get angry, and that’s the one thing his sympathy is guaranteed to accomplish.

“I’d like to see it.”

 _Please stay in my range,_ Mercury whispers into Paulina’s earpiece. Paulina doesn’t answer.

The villagers escort them to a repair dock, eyeing their radars and equipment with suspicion. Understandable. Sigil has bought out so many villages of this type before.

The teenager turns the light on, then pulls a white sheet away from a pile. Underneath is something that once was a ship, likely no bigger than a five seat car. Paulina inspects it for any distinguishing marks, finding only char and the unbearable stench of the fried battery.

“Any… uh… any human remains found here?”

“Nothing we could find,” Shepherd whimpers, apologetic. “We have a team coming in soon to do a full inspection. We were hoping that’d be you guys and all.”

“Sorry. This is more of a… personal inquiry. Could we see the place you picked the ship up from?”

He acquiesces, programming the location into their GPS and declining to accompany them. Paulina is perfectly happy with this. Leontes is already too much company.

The trek takes half an hour. Adjacent to the pinned location is a shed with a metallic door and a number pad on it. The depression in the ground is a little softened by sand blown over, but the crash is obviously recent.

“Why would Antigonus have come here?” Leontes wonders aloud, as Paulina wonders in silence. She starts typing in all the passwords she knew him to have, hoping it won’t trigger a lock. The day they met, the day of their wedding, his mother’s ciphered name. She grows weary of it as each returns a buzz of failure. What if Antigonus never reached this point? What if he never was here at all? Still, a possibility remains. He was pursuing Hermione, back when she was fleeing the damage to her reputation. Back when she still thought she could outrun it, and keep it out.

“Mercury? You still in range?”

_Yes, Paulina._

“I’d like you to run through all the data collected on Hermione, and provide me every password she ever used. Once you run out of those, generate new passwords based on what you have on her.”

“You think she was here?” Leontes breathes, hardly able to speak as he rushes to her. He isn’t dressed for the sun on Xeric, and in his emotion is only getting redder.

“I’m trying not to think. Give me space,” she says, as Mercury Diploid whispers to her various combinations of numbers. _826400\. 365528. 836290. 486343._ Hermione was too cautious to rely on sentimental passwords, or at least, sentiments comprehensible to the average human. But she may not have been beyond reusing them. _929679._

The number pad emits a whistle, and the door handle lowers in Paulina’s grasp.

“What was-”

 _What was that number?_ Mercury Diploid repeats with a grin in her voice. _It was Fare-Thee-Well’s activation code. Oh. Oh, Polly, honey, don’t cry._

“I’m not,” Paulina answers, wiping the tears off her sunburnt cheeks.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk to yourself like that,” Leontes grumbles. “It’s unnerving.”

Her fists barely have time to clench before Mercury pipes up again:

 _Honey, calm down. He’s a bastard, yes. We agree on that. But we’re not about to hit people and set everything downhill. That’s not what we’re gonna do. Deep breaths, yeah? Yeah. There you go.”_

Paulina sighs into her joined hands, pushing down the shudder that almost took her over. She doesn’t know if she’s ready to see whatever last trace Hermione left inside that shed, not when she’s lost Antigonus in the same day. But Mercury is right. She needs to trust the plan, not let it be knocked off-rails.

She opens the door.

A stairwell takes them into a wider area, empty and dark. Leontes walks away, flashlight in hand. The beam passes over his face: he is crying too. Paulina can’t bring herself to care. He says:

“I’ll try and get the power back on.”

Paulina wanders between aisles of tools, cables, and materials, floating through the familiar scent of metallic dust and petrol.

“Antigonus?” Her voice echoes six times at least. This place is huge and empty. There’s an elevated space above hundreds of scissor lifts assembled together, and just as Paulina climbs onto it with a grunt of effort, the neon lights begin to hum and blink on, one by one.

 

What she sees then, is not the Fare-Thee-Well. Fare-Thee-Well is gone. Fare-Thee-Well was shaped like a lynx’s head. Fare-Thee-Well was so, so much smaller. This ship is at least as tall as the Mercury Diploid. At first, Paulina assumes its shape is that of a medusa, due to the many tendrils atop of it. She realizes, upon inspecting the motifs of leaves all along its silver body, that it’s a birch.

Rifling through the office area of the safehouse, she eventually finds the remote tablet to power the birch up. There, in capital letters, is the name of the Galatean Ship:  
PASTURE’S WANDERER.

“Looks like we may have someone travelling back with us after all, Mercury.”

_“I want to meet it. Activate it, already!”_

Paulina enters the password for the Fare-Thee-Well, and knows too well that Hermione wasn’t trying to remake him, only to remember him while finding something new. Then, a girl’s voice rings from the speakers:

“Hello, Paulina.”

Leontes comes running, and from the ramp where he’d been fidgeting with the panels, he leans down and cries:

“What the hell is that?”

“I’m prepared for take-off,” Mercury says for Paulina and only for Paulina. “Hurry up if you don’t want to get locked in there.” She pauses. “You know I’d never lock you in there.”

“Never say never. Hi, Wanderer. Would you be put off at all if I piloted you for a little while?”

Wanderer’s tendrils agitate about happily.

“I’d be happy to fly you anywhere you need.”

“Paulina, we can’t just take this shit,” Leontes snaps, walking sideways on the ramp, ever taking his eyes of the birch mech. “We have to report it.”

“This ‘shit’ was the last project Hermione ever worked on,” Paulina shouts back, approaching the bottom of the ramp to look straight up at him, in spite of Mercury’s urging. He stops at the ladder with a contrite expression.

“Look -- you’re trying to make it look like I don’t care.”

“I don’t have to try very hard.”

“You can't just make grand gestures like this,” he explains, gesturing with his hands like it makes his words any less semantically dead. “You might not think I loved her, but in real life, love comes with barriers and obstacles and red tape, and…”

“...and ruining their career over a glimmer of a shadow of a thought…”

“Listen, you don’t know shit about our relationship.”

“...that she may have been interested in somebody else.”

Wanderer’s lights turn off, as if to hide from an aggressor. Mercury tells Paulina:

_Now’s the time._

“I would never have blown up at her if I knew she was gonna kill herself over it!”

“But you were still in your right to blow up at her. That’s what the end of that sentence is.”

“Stop acting like you were in this relationship. You have a version of the story that is one-sided and painted to make her look like the victim. Things are more nuanced than that.”

“Well, if we’re talking victims here, Lee, one of you is dead and the other isn’t. I’d say that’s a pretty good indicator.”

There’s barely concealed anger in Mercury’s voice now, and Paulina thinks she might like it. It's something more along the lines of the Hermione she knew.

_“Paulina, I love you very much, but I’m gonna fry the door circuits whether you’re out or not. That asshole’s not leaving.”_

Paulina turns on her heels and orders Wanderer to bring her ramp down as Leontes protests.

“We haven’t gotten authorization to fly that ship round here!”

The generators switch on, and the hum of the engines are a comforting lullaby to Paulina’s raw senses.

“Mercury. You’ve got access to the locks, right? Can you open the roof?”

 _Will-do,_ comes the sing-song answer. And soon the ceiling opens on a sky stained lavender with sunset. 

“Did Hermione ever take you out here, Wanderer?”

“Couple times.”

“Ever been to open space?”

“Is that a challenge?”

Paulina doesn’t even need to give the order. Within moments, Wanderer is rushing through the layers of atmosphere, though not so fast that she can’t see the roof shut over Leontes before the planet Xeric starts shrinking. The circuits keeping the doors open are going to fry, and he’ll be locked in there until someone comes find him, or else if he dies. It’s not a fair fate, it’s not a lawful fate, and yet, Paulina cannot bring herself to care.

The first thing she does when she gets back to the warehouse is depower Mercury, rehauling her code from the bottom like she told Leontes she’d have to do. Now he’s gone, she doesn’t need that hate anymore. The simulation is cut into a mosaic and rearranged to fit on the new skeleton Paulina made. A skeleton more like Hermione’s own, all focus, no grudges. Vengeful Mercury dies on that worktable, and becomes something new.

 _Where did we leave Leontes?_ Mercury asks, upon reactivation.

“In the bunker, where Hermione used to work.”

_Where I used to work?_

Paulina blinks, then readjusts her gloves like nothing had happened.

“Yes. Where you used to work.”

Mercury’s round rabbit eyes dim.

_I would like to go get him._

“The people on Xeric will take care of him, don’t worry. Besides, we got Wanderer back.” Paulina nudges Mercury-or-Hermione with her elbow. “You remember Wanderer? You worked on her.”

For a moment, Mercury-or-Hermione seems to have shut off. She lets Paulina clean her chassis without a word. Only once she's done does she ask:

_Paulina. Did you make me… meaning, the Galatean version of me, do something I wouldn’t have done as a human?_

Paulina puts the remote tablet down and rubs the bridge of her nose. She looks for the right words, melting into her chair under the weight of it all, and doesn’t find them. Instead, she opens doors to the warehouse, and walks towards the yellowing fields beyond. She turns back and says:

“If you feel like leaving, I won’t blame you.”

Mercury-or-Hermione’s engines become almost silent, and her gaze falls to the ground. When she finds the answer, she whispers it across the distance.


End file.
